Saving money when using eBay is as easy as following these steps. Don't be fooled by standard sales tricks - get the bargains and save!

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Steps

1

Determine the retail price of what you're looking to buy. Call a couple of local stores and do a search on the internet to check other internet sites that sell the same items you are seeking. Find the lowest retail price possible and use these prices as your guide. Time spent researching is money saved in the long run!

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2

Decide if you are willing to buy it used. If so, you're going to save a lot of money. Keep in mind that some things are better used than others, and some are not. Take electronics for example. They can be hit or miss and they usually are not going to have a warranty, but if they do, this is definitely your number one choice. Lightly used clothes/accessories are generally marked down significantly and here is where you can get some great deals.

3

Get an eBay account. Type in what you're looking for in its simplest form, and look to the box on the left with the options. Click on "completed listings", and search. Now you have all the items that have been sold in the past 90 days (all these auctions are over). Look at the final bids in green, indicating these were sold at the listed price. Are they cheap enough when comparing to retail to bother with eBay? More than likely, yes. But always look at shipping charges, and assess again. If it's a large item, check your local classifieds and craigslist.org before considering eBay. The shipping fees alone could end up making it more expensive than buying it used locally. After looking at some of the completed items, determine how much they're generally going for new and used. Use these new figures as a reference to how much you're willing to bid. Look for the finished auctions with the most bids (also indicated in the completed auction title). These are generally the best deals.

4

Do not use a "Buy it Now" option, as you will notice it's likely more than our new reference prices determined from the final auctions! When a cheap "Buy it Now" comes up, it usually gets snatched up pretty quickly. They do come up every once in a while, so don't completely rule it out, but more often than not, they don't.

5

Find an item that has already gotten a few bids. It is not good to be the only bidder at the end of an auction because it tends to suggest that you didn't get that great of a deal, unless the seller put a horrible description of the item to the point that buyers didn't even find it. For example, a guy selling a Gibson Les Paul puts "guitar" as the title. Here is where the golden deals are, but you won't find many of these because their poor description was not helpful in the search tools.

6

Try a few alternate spellings, spaces, hyphens, etc. for your item. If there are some spelling mistakes, there are going to be less people encountering the auction which = lower prices.

7

Learn the art of sniping. When you have found the right item with a low price, some bidders, and good pictures, now you want to bid. There is no point in bidding on an item early in the game. This does nothing but create commotion and drive the price up. Watch the item and track it in My eBay. Do not bid until the last 15 seconds. Here is how to do it. With 5-10 minutes left in the auction, open up 2 browsers and your clock (you know, double click the clock on the bottom right of your desktop). Put the auction page in both browsers. In one browser enter the absolute most you're willing to pay, taking into consideration the final auction prices, shipping, and how much they were going for in retail stores. Remember, if you are going to be kicking yourself if you lose the auction by one penny above your price, then that isn't the most you're willing to pay. Pick a price so that if the final bid is more, you're OK with not winning the item. Enter your price, click place bid, and there is going to be a confirm bid page after you hit the button. Now look at your other browser with the item and keep hitting refresh until there is a minute left in the auction. Look at your clock and countdown 40 seconds from when the refresh page told you one minute. Go to the other browser and click place bid. Usually when you keep hitting refresh during the last couple of minutes, you can see all the action with dumb buyers fighting back and forth. If you did it right, you should have sneaked in, unsuspecting, and stolen the item at the price you wanted the item for.

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